Then, WWE surprisingly stuck with its plans for SmackDown's WrestleMania main event, which, interestingly enough, seems to have been welcomed with open arms by the majority of fans. That, of course, represents a stark contract from Raw's main event of Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar, which has been planned as the WrestleMania 34 main event for the last year but has been met with fan resistance, mainly from diehards who felt like Seth Rollins or Braun Strowman would make a better foe for Lesnar.

And while there has been concern about Reigns vs. Lesnar falling apart due to a wide array of circumstances, there doesn't seem to be any about Nakamura vs. Styles. Why? Because it's the right WrestleMania main event for the blue brand.

Although the bout is considered a dream match for WWE fans, Styles vs. Nakamura actually took place just two years ago at New Japan Pro-Wrestling's Wrestle Kingdom 12, the promotion's equivalent to WrestleMania. Styles vs. Nakamura was the semi-main event of that show, which really got the ball rolling on NJPW making serious waves in the US. In fact, according to Brandon Howard of Fightful.com, the success of Wrestle Kingdom 10 helped NJPW generate more revenue in 2016 than it had in any year since 1997.

More than that, it helped establish Nakamura and Styles as two of the most coveted wrestlers in the world. Just a few weeks after Wrestle Kingdom 10 in January 2016, both Styles and Nakamura signed with WWE, with Styles debuting at the Royal Rumble and Nakamura doing so at NXT TakeOver a few months later in a five-star match against Sami Zayn. Almost instantly, Styles and Nakamura demonstrated why WWE brought them in to begin with.

Styles' initial slate of WWE merchandise immediately sold out while the same was true for Nakamura, showing just how quickly they caught on with a new WWE audience. Indeed, Fightful's analysis of Google Shopping search data also showed that Styles was likely a top three merchandise seller in 2016 and 2017, perhaps just behind Roman Reigns and John Cena, who have obviously been in WWE a lot longer than Styles has.

It was Styles' strong merchandise sales that helped established him as the face of SmackDown and the most logical choice from the blue brand to main event WrestleMania this year, which he should have done in 2017 as well. According to the January 1st Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Styles main evented the fifth most shows that had at least 10,000 fans in attendance last year, despite spending much of the year in the midcard during the main event push of Jinder Mahal.